Obamacare Could Bankrupt America

In his latest column Ron Paul accuses the leadership in Washington of living in a fantasy world, employing unlimited money creation, reckless warmongering and endless spending to further increase their own control. The latest example is the creation of a new, expansive, public healthcare plan which will further bankrupt the nation.

As the healthcare debate rages on, there is one reality that even the proponents of this hostile takeover of healthcare by government cannot ignore – and that is money. The government simply does not have the money for a new, expansive, public healthcare plan. The country is in a deep recession that will deepen even further with the coming collapse of the commercial real estate market. The last thing we need is for government to increase and expand taxes to pay for another damaging, wasteful program. Foreigners are becoming less enthusiastic about buying our debt, and creating another open-ended welfare program when we cannot pay for what is already in place, will not help. Champions of socialized medicine want to tax the rich, tax businesses that already cannot afford to provide health plans to employees, and tax people who don’t want to participate in the government’s scheme by buying an approved healthcare plan. Presumably, all these taxes are to induce compliance. This is not freedom, nor will it improve healthcare.

There are limits to how much government can tax before it kills the host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize prices, it has the net effect of inflating them instead. The economic reality is that you cannot distort natural market pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces would drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures, adds regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy, and in the end, drives prices up.

The non-partisan CBO estimates that the healthcare plan will cost almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years. But government crystal balls always massively underestimate costs. It is not hard to imagine the final cost being two or three times the estimates, even though the estimates are bad enough.

It is still surreal that in a free country we are talking only about HOW government should fix healthcare, rather than WHY government should fix healthcare. This should be between doctors and patients. But this has been the discussion since the 1960s and the inception of Medicare and Medicaid, when government first began intervening to keep costs down and make sure everyone had access. The result of Medicaid/Medicare price controls and regulatory burden has been to drive more doctors out of the system – making it more difficult for the poor and the elderly to receive quality care! Seemingly, there are no failed government programs, only underfunded ones. If we refuse to acknowledge common sense economics, the prescription will always be the same: more government.

Make no mistake, government control and micromanagement of healthcare will hurt, not help healthcare in this country. However, if for a moment, we allowed the assumption that it really would accomplish all they claim, paying for it would still plunge the country into poverty. This solves nothing. The government, like any household struggling with bills to pay, should prioritize its budget. If the administration is serious about supporting healthcare without contributing to our skyrocketing deficits, they should fulfill promises to reduce our overseas commitments and use some of those savings to take care of Americans at home instead of killing foreigners abroad.

The leadership in Washington persists in a fantasy world of unlimited money to spend on unlimited programs and wars to garner unlimited control. But there is a fast-approaching limit to our ability to borrow, steal, and print. Acknowledging this reality is not mean-spirited or cruel. On the contrary, it could be the only thing that saves us from complete and total economic meltdown.

(If you’ve found a spelling or transcription error, please notify us anonymously by selecting the misspelled text and then pressing Ctrl+Enter. Thank you!)

Rome didn’t fall because the overreach; that was done 300 years before the fall.

The Roman Empire was around longer than the Persian Empire. If one considers NATO to be an imperial structure, then by this logic, we still have about 250 years left.

I don’t think that’s THE problem. This statement isn’t to say the state of affairs is good or bad. Those who think America is about to collapse because it are wrong-although it might (or might not) still be hurting America.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – An unruly Little Rock crowd heckled and shouted at two Arkansas Democratic congressmen Wednesday, accusing them of supporting a government-backed health plan that would take away Americans’ personal choice and freedom.
At one point, U.S. Rep. Mike Ross sat with his head in his hands while the crowd shouted.

What ITMB Rangel never acknowledges in this interview is that they want to replace private insurance companies with the ‘USA Insurance Corporation’.

Christine

“and the fact is that there is tens of billions of dollars in terms of profits made by health insurance companies. You have to appreciate that they don’t provide care, they merely hire hospitals and doctors to do that.” ~Rangle

That profit is what the US government wants so it can keep spending and controlling, while Americans are looking for financial relief and access to health care services that will never come via the government-controlled health care plan.

I’m sure too that aspiring doctors never thought of themselves as working towards being employees of health insurance companies!

Christine

There’s going to be a hell of a lot more people yelling very soon!! in the US and UK first.

“In this newsletter we will outline what is likely to be the devastating effect of the credit bubbles, government money printing and of the disastrous actions that governments are taking. Starting in the next 6 months and culminating in 2011-12 the world will experience a series of tumultuous events which will be life changing for most people in the world. But 2011-12 will not be the beginning of an upturn in the world economy but instead the start of a long period of economic, political and social upheaval that could last for a couple of decades.

But even the current figure of 30 million unemployed is a catastrophe. Adding dependants to every unemployed person there are currently 100 million people affected by unemployment in the US. In the next three months 3 million unemployed will fall out of the social security safety-net. These are the people who were laid off in the second half of 2008. Including their families this means that around 10 million people will become destitute between now and September with no social security and no savings. If we then add the 4 million that were made redundant in the first half of 2009 that will result in an additional 13 million people including families will become destitute around Christmas. This is a disaster of unimaginable consequences that will affect the whole fabric of American society.

During the next 6-9 months unemployment will severely affect most parts of the world including China, Asia and Africa. Never before has there been a global unemployment crisis affecting the world simultaneously. This will not only mean a massive decline in consumption and world trade leading to a recession or depression worldwide but also poverty, famine and social unrest.

Yes, many banks are paying higher bonuses in 2009 than 2008. Goldman Sachs is on course to pay bonuses of $20 billion or $700,00 per employee and Morgan Stanley a 30% increase from average per employee of $262,000 last year to $340,000 this year. JP Morgan’s bonus pool for the first quarter of 2009 is up 175% to $3.3 billion and the new chief executive of RBS, the nationalized UK bank is getting an incentive package worth £10 million! Similar bonuses are being paid by many other banks. Barclays Capital for example is on a massive spending spree recruiting executives with golden hellos and guaranteed bonuses of millions per employee.

Secondly the next phase of problems in the financial system will start by the autumn of 2009 at the latest. Since this will come as a total shock to everyone the effect will be much worse than in 2008. So far US banks have taken losses of $1.1 trillion. Conservative estimates put total losses at $2.2 trillion but realistic estimates are around $4 trillion and this excludes any problems in the $600 trillion to $1 quadrillion derivatives market a big part of which is worthless. In the next round of capital raising for banks there will only be one investor – the government. Thus there will be more money printing.”

,,Government paper will collapse – first in the US and UK
With the escalation of money printing markets will be flooded with government paper which nobody wants, leaving governments to buy its own junk. The two countries with the worst problems are the UK and the US and their precarious situation will emerge first. Within the next few months rating agencies are likely to downgrade both countries’ debt. This will lead to the value of the treasury bonds and gilts collapsing and interest rates quickly moving up into the teens. The higher rates will make the financing costs of the debt to up exponentially leading to more money printing and higher interest rates. This is the “perfect” vicious circle that will end in a hyperinflationary depression.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Hmmmm……

Roberta

I know a lot of us have seen it coming. I just hoped I was wrong. I had hoped that I was just a conspiracy theory paranoid idiot. Wrong. I fear for my older age and for my children and grandchildren. I realize that things have to change, but there are much better ways to do it that won’t harm so many. Still, it is all about power, isn’t it?
It seems that movies tend to be prophetic sometimes. Watch V for Vendetta. How far will it all go until we all wake up?

VR

This morning Reuters reports that antidepressant use in the US more than doubled between 1996 and 2005, from 13 to 27 million Americans. That amounts to about 20% of the US workforce. Researchers speculate that one reason for the increase in legal drug use is that Americans more readily “accept diagnosis of depression.”

Although there was little change in total promotional spending for antidepressants between 1999 ($0.98 billion) and 2005 ($1.02 billion), there was a marked increase in the percentage of this spending that was devoted to direct-to consumer advertising, from 3.3 percent ($32 million) to 12 percent ($122.00 million).

More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health.

“Hey you — feeling a little blue? Can’t seem to make ends meet? Paycheck shrinking while the price of everything is going up? Does it seem like society crumbling before your very eyes? Don’t worry! Be happy. The corporate drug pushers have just the thing for you to forget all your worries and get back to work as a productive member of society.”

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

After ruling much of the known world for centuries, Rome fell due to a number of factors that, historians believe, would not have been fatal in isolation, but that proved terminal in combination. Military overspending and overreach, an untenable economic system, and currency debasement all played a role. As has been well documented, the Roman emperors attempted to distract the populace from the increasingly dire reality of their situation by providing bread and circuses. But entertainments could not stop the nation-state from yielding to the pressure of its own weight.http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0802.html

Mike

Could bankrupt America? I thought that America already is bankrupt, and it’s just not totally obvious since the Federal Reserve is propping them up by lending (printing) more and more money to bankroll it.

VR

Coming Soon, To Your Town?

The UK government is about to spend $700 million dollars installing surveillance cameras inside the private homes of citizens to ensure that children go to bed on time, attend school and eat proper meals.

No you aren’t reading a passage from George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, this is Britain in 2009, a country which already has more surveillance cameras watching its population than the whole of Europe put together.

Now the government is embarking on a scheme called “Family Intervention Projects” which will literally create a nanny state on steroids, with social services goons and private security guards given the authority to make regular “home checks” to ensure parents are raising their children correctly.

Telescreens will also be installed so government spies can keep an eye on whether parents are mistreating kids and whether the kids are fulfilling their obligations under a pre-signed contract.

Another key aspect of the program will see parents deemed “responsible” by the government handed the power to denounce and report bad parents who allow their children to engage in bad behavior. Such families will then be targeted for “interventions”.

Both parents and children will also be forced to sign a “behavior contract” with the government known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, in which the state will dictate obligations that it expects to be met.

“Family Intervention Projects”

Christine

Those that create such strange plans to spy on ordinary people are trying to settle down their paranoid thoughts. They’ve been at this NWO plan for years. Such evil destroys the mind and heart. They have performed so many crimes against humanity, they now worry obsessively about the retailiation against them …and rightfully so. They are not so secret anymore, and it will come. There is no ducking to avoid the blowback. It’s the law of the universe…what goes around comes around. What a person puts out in their lifetime, comes back like a boomerang. These people have perverted and sick minds, all those who chase and support this NWO with destruction and obsessive, oppressive control of everyone and everything as their pathway. There is nothing positive about it. Humans were not designed to live like this. Freedom is our natural state.

It ultimately is self-destructive. We can hope that their self-destruction comes soon for the sake of the rest of humanity.

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